Today, patients and medical staff alike are becoming more accustomed to intake and follow-up processes going digital due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Studies show, however, that despite 60% of patient payments being made online,1 credit card information continues to be collected over the phone and during in-office visits. Not only can this cause longer patient wait times, but it can also add more work for staff and lead to higher outstanding balances.
“More and more practices today are starting to collect consent forms, insurance information, patient satisfaction surveys and other documentation through automated messaging,” said Simon Bolz, co-founder and co-CEO of Klara. “When we took a step back, a lightbulb went off — payment processing was the missing piece. We realized that there was an opportunity to streamline payment workflows for practices, in order to improve the patient experience and minimize work for practice staff.”
The interface between Klara and modmed Pay addresses this issue by streamlining how payments and credit card details are collected digitally. Users who are customers of both Modernizing Medicine’s Practice Management system and modmed Pay can leverage Klara’s messaging platform to simplify patient billing in one place.
Klara’s interface with modmed Pay will allow practices to:
- Enable patients to store “cards on file” through links sent via automated SMS. While messages offering the links are sent through Klara, all credit card information is end-to-end encrypted. Klara can send these messages offering links automatically before any defined appointment type, without any additional manual work needed.
- See available “cards on file” in Klara. Whether a practice has tokens for a credit card stored via Klara or modmed Pay, the practice can see them within Klara.
- Charge the patient using the stored tokens for a credit card from within Klara. Using the tokens stored for credit cards, practices can charge any available credit card for the applicable patient right from within Klara and the charge will automatically show up in the Modernizing Medicine Practice Management system.
- Send automated receipts to patients through Klara. Patients will conveniently receive PDF receipts via Klara. The receipts will show charges and descriptions provided by modmed Pay. These receipts will be centralized to the same thread as other patient communications, allowing patients and staff to easily access them from one place.
Practices utilizing Klara’s interface with modmed Pay should experience fewer outstanding balances due to the ability to store multiple “cards on file”. This can lead to time savings for administrative staff who no longer have to spend their time collecting credit card information.
One such practice — Downtown Dermatology LLC in Columbus, Ohio — has benefited from Klara’s interface with modmed Pay. “The interface has significantly reduced the time our staff spends playing phone tag to collect payment information from our patients,” said Kathy Catania, office manager at Downtown Dermatology. “It will also be huge for settling outstanding balances — an absolute must for any practice.”
While Klara’s interface with modmed Pay is only available to Modernizing Medicine customers using both Practice Management and modmed Pay, practices interested in learning more about the interface can visit https://www.klara.com/free-
About Klara
Klara’s end-to-end patient engagement platform enables healthcare organizations to easily communicate with patients, provide virtual care, collaborate as a team, and automate many front-desk tasks. Thousands of healthcare teams across more than 40 specialties use Klara to make their workflows more efficient, deliver an exceptional patient experience across the entire care journey, and grow their patient volume. For more information, visit www.klara.com.
About Modernizing Medicine
Modernizing Medicine is transforming healthcare through intelligent specialty-specific platforms that are intended to help our clients increase practice efficiency and focus on patient outcomes. Our platforms are built for speed and efficiency. Through our cloud-based, electronic health records (EHR) and Practice Management (PM) systems, and our Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) services, Modernizing Medicine helps physicians streamline workflows from clinical to financial to operational environments. Our staff physicians help to develop products and services for dermatology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, orthopedics, otolaryngology, pain management, plastic surgery, podiatry, urology practices and ambulatory surgery centers. For more information, visit www.modmed.com. Connect with Modernizing Medicine via its blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.
1Statistics on medical billing, patient payments
https://www.beckersasc.com/